Hattie McDaniel - Biography - IMDb Hattie McDaniel Biography Showing all 45 items Jump to: Overview (4) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (4) | Trade Mark (1) | Trivia (30) | Personal Quotes (3) | Salary (2) Overview (4) 5' 2" (1.57 m) Mini Bio (1) After working as early as the 1910s as a band vocalist, Hattie McDaniel debuted as a maid in The Golden West (1932). Her maid-mammy characters became steadily more assertive, showing up first in Judge Priest (1934) and becoming pronounced in Alice Adams (1935). In this one, directed by George Stevens and aided and abetted by star Katharine Hepburn , she makes it clear she has little use for her employers' pretentious status seeking. By The Mad Miss Manton (1938) she actually tells off her socialite employer Barbara Stanwyck and her snooty friends. This path extends into the greatest role of her career, Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939).

Here she is, in a number of ways, superior to most of the white folk surrounding her. From that point here roles unfortunately descended, with her characters becoming more and more menial. She played on the "Amos and Andy" and Eddie Cantor radio shows in the 1930s and 1940s; the title in her own radio show "Beulah" (1947-51), and the same part on TV ( Beulah (1950)). Her part in Gone with the Wind (1939) won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, the first African American actress to win an Academy Award. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu> Spouse (4) Frequently played "maid" characters Trivia (30) Arguably the first African-American woman to sing on radio (1915, with Professor George Morrison's Negro Orchestra, Denver, CO); first African-American to be buried in Los Angeles' Rosedale Cemetery The human "Mammy" character in the Tom+Jerry Cartoons was based on her. This human supporting character was best remembered for shouting "THOMAS" very loudly.

Was the first African-American to win an Academy Award. She won as Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939). She became the first African-American to attend the Academy Awards as a guest, not a servant. 47 years after her death, has been memorialized by a pink-and-gray granite monument at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Her wish to be buried in Hollywood at her death in 1952 was denied amid the racism of the era. [1999] Sister of actress Etta McDaniel . She willed her Oscar to Howard University, but the Oscar was lost during the race riots at Howard during the 1960s. It has never been found. Her father was a slave, who was eventually freed. When the date of the Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind (1939) approached, McDaniel told director Victor Fleming she would not be able to make it, when in actuality she did not want to cause trouble due to the virulent racism that was rampant in Atlanta at the time.

Despite the fact Clark Gable played a joke on her during the filming of Gone with the Wind (1939) (he put real brandy in the decanter instead of iced tea during the Bonnie Blue birth celebration scene), McDaniel and Gable were actually good friends. Gable later threatened to boycott the premiere in Atlanta because McDaniel was not invited, but later relented when she convinced him to go. Is a honorary member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Incorporated Lived in a middle class African American section of Los Angeles coined "Sugar Hill". Pictured on a USA 39¢ commemorative postage stamp in the Black Heritage series, issued 25 January 2006. Despite her substantial salaries for her various roles, her estate was valued at less than $10,000 when her will was made public. She left her last husband, Larry Williams, only $1. Her Academy Award was presented by Fay Bainter . McDaniel and Louise Beavers , both of whom played the title character Beulah (1950) in the 1950s TV series, died ten years apart on October 26th.

Is one of 6 African-American actresses to receive the Academy Award. The others, in chronological order, are Whoopi Goldberg for Ghost (1990), Halle Berry for Monster's Ball (2001), Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls (2006), Mo'Nique for Precious (2009) and Octavia Spencer for The Help (2011). She was awarded 2 Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Radio at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard and for Motion Pictures at 1719 Vine Street in Hollywood, California. She had a one-time intimate affair with actress Tallulah Bankhead , according to chronicler of the Hollywood underground Kenneth Anger . Profiled in book "Funny Ladies" by Stephen Silverman. [1999] Was referenced in both George Clooney and Mo'Nique 's Oscar acceptance speeches.

Although her gravestone at Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles and her memorial cenotaph at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery show 1895 as her year of birth, Kansas census records for her household dated March 1st, 1895 show her age as 2, confirming that the year on her funerary markers is incorrect. When black actors and actresses couldn't find a decent place to stay in Los Angeles, Hattie opened her doors to them at her home. Hattie's controversial career was examined in the AMC-TV documentary "Beyond Tara, the Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel" hosted by Whoopi Goldberg . A huge vaudeville star in her day as a singer and dancer. A popular favorite as radio's "Beulah," Hattie starred in only one TV episode of Beulah (1950) when it was transferred to the small screen due to her diagnosis of breast cancer. It was rumored there was another episode but, if there ever was one, it was never found. Ethel Waters took over the "Beulah" role and reportedly hated the job.

Attacked by the NAACP during her career for appearing in negative, stereotyped servile roles, Hattie strongly and proudly stated that she did the best she could. She went on to state that she worked not only for herself but thought she was working for future generations of African-Americans as well. She always hoped people would come around and understand what she had to go through in Hollywood and was extremely hurt at the way she was treated, for the roles she couldn't get, and how the NAACP kept pushing the image of Lena Horne on her. Was the 13th actress to receive an Academy Award; she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Gone with the Wind (1939) at The 12th Academy Awards on February 29, 1940. Biography in "Actresses of a Certain Character: Forty Familiar Hollywood Faces from the Thirties to the Fifties" by Axel Nissen. Is one of 13 actresses who won their Best Supporting Actress Oscars in a movie that also won the Best Picture Oscar (she won for Gone with the Wind (1939)). The others are Teresa Wright for Mrs.

Miniver (1942), Celeste Holm for Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Mercedes McCambridge for All the King's Men (1949), Donna Reed for From Here to Eternity (1953), Eva Marie Saint for On the Waterfront (1954), Rita Moreno for West Side Story (1961), Meryl Streep for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Juliette Binoche for The English Patient (1996), Judi Dench for Shakespeare in Love (1998), Jennifer Connelly for A Beautiful Mind (2001), Catherine Zeta-Jones for Chicago (2002) and Lupita Nyong'o for 12 Years a Slave (2013). Personal Quotes (3) I'd rather play a maid than be one. Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn't, I'd be making $7 a week being one.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, fellow members of the motion picture industry and honored guests: This is one of the happiest moments of my life, and I want to thank each one of you who had a part in selecting me for one of their awards, for your kindness. It has made me feel very, very humble; and I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything that I may be able to do in the future. I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel, and may I say thank you and God bless you. [Her acceptance speech upon winning the Oscar for "Gone With the Wind"] Salary (2) 1000+ images about *Hattie McDaniel on Pinterest | Gone with the wind, O clock and Actresses Pinterest • The world’s catalog of ideas *Hattie McDaniel Hattie McDaniel (June 10, 1895 – October 26, 1952) was an American actress. She was the first African American to win an Academy Award.

She won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind. She was born June 10, 1895, in Wichita, Kansas, to former slaves. She was the youngest of 13 children. 27 Pins472 Followers Filed in: Entertainment , Opinion Hattie McDaniel poses with her Oscar (AP Photo) Hattie McDaniel couldn’t attend the Atlanta premiere of Gone With the Wind December 15, 1939 because Jim Crow laws forbade it. In the South, ads depicting McDaniel and the other black actors were also forbidden. At the February 29, 1940 Oscars where she became the very first African-American to ever win, she reportedly sat at a segregated table at the back of the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles. “I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry,” she said when she accepted the award. Despite being a well-rounded entertainer whose skills were honed on the vaudeville circuit, McDaniel and many others like her were limited in servant roles on screens. So her historic win for playing a Mammy role was bittersweet.

While McDaniel’s talent certainly warranted recognition, she was sadly prevented from showing that full range on screen. Back then, as now, there were black people who objected to films like Gone with the Wind and the film was indeed picketed in several cities. With Lupita Nyong’o poised to win that very same Best Supporting Actress Oscar in the 21st century for playing Patsey, a real-life enslaved woman who Solomon Northup chronicled in his real-life horror 12 Years a Slave, some ask have things really changed? The answer is not clearly ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ With the exception of Whoopi Goldberg’s win for this very same Oscar in 1990, the others won theirs in the 2000s: Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls; Mo’Nique for Precious and Octavia Spencer for The Help. Halle Berry won the very first Best Actress Oscar awarded to a black woman the night of March 25, 2002 for her 2001 film Monster’s Ball.

So Nyong’o would be just the seventh black woman to ever win an Oscar in the Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress categories and the first-ever black female to win not born in the U.S. Given that the last four Oscars for black actresses were awarded in the 21st century, there is indeed reason to be hopeful, especially considering that, in all of the 20th century, just two were awarded and this century is just getting started. Couple that with last year’s diverse film offerings created by, directed by or featuring African-American talent and there’s indeed reason to be hopeful. The influx of non-American-born talent like Idris Elba, Steve McQueen, Naomie Harris, Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Amma Asante, who directs Belle set for a May 2 release, is another encouraging sign. Change hasn’t necessarily come as swiftly to those bestowing the honors. As in McDaniel’s day, Academy Award voters remain largely white and male . Instead, it’s the outside film world that is changing. And a lot of that boils down to the film industry’s increasing accessibility outside of the studio structure.

Both Monster’s Ball and Precious, for which Lee Daniels was the driving force, were independent films that got bigger. The same goes for 12 Years a Slave. This industry has never been particularly kind to black talent. Ironically (or perhaps, “cruel twist of fate” better describes it), The Birth of a Nation, which is fueled by white supremacist propaganda, is arguably one of film’s greatest technical achievements. So Hollywood, the Academy Awards especially, has a long history of celebrating technical and creative triumphs while completely sidestepping the accompanying ugliness apparent in many of them. Undoubtedly this is the reason it’s easier for this year’s broadcast to go all out for The Wizard of Oz, as Entertainment Weekly’s Jeff Labrecque observes , and ignore its Oscar-decorated contemporary Gone With the Wind. The truth just has a way of complicating things. 12 Years a Slave is a film adapted from a book based on the experiences of a man who was actually enslaved and, as a result, does not shy away from slavery’s inhumanity and brutality.

Meanwhile, Gone with the Wind, also based on a book, as Labrecque writes, “celebrates the Southern plantation way of life as a harmonious ideal.” Not exactly a winning combo. It’s a reality the Oscars, especially in its quest for ratings, is unwilling to confront right now. But even as one film makes a mockery of history and another tries to set the record straight, one thing should remain consistent: talent shines. Hattie McDaniel’s could not be denied and, hopefully, the same will ring true for Lupita Nyong’o. Follow Ronda Racha Penrice on Twitter at @RondaRacha . Hattie McDaniel - IMDb IMDb Actress | Soundtrack After working as early as the 1910s as a band vocalist, Hattie McDaniel debuted as a maid in The Golden West (1932). Her maid-mammy characters became steadily more assertive, showing up first in Judge Priest (1934) and becoming pronounced in Alice Adams (1935). In this one, directed by George Stevens and aided and abetted by star Katharine Hepburn ...

See full bio » Born: Olivia de Havilland, 100, Opens Up About Her Famous Feud with Late Sister Joan Fontaine 6 July 2016 7:30 AM, -08:00 | PEOPLE.com a list of 30 people created 17 Aug 2012 a list of 41 people created 29 Jan 2015 a list of 35 images created 09 Mar 2015 a list of 42 people created 16 Apr 2015 a list of 32 people created 13 Nov 2015 Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDbPage How much of Hattie McDaniel's work have you seen? User Polls Won 1 Oscar. Another 2 wins. See more awards » Known For 1949 The Ed Wynn Show (TV Series) (performer - 1 episode) - Episode #1.13 (1949) ...

(performer: "Some of These Days") 1946 Song of the South (performer: "Sooner Or Later (You're Gonna Be Comin' Around)" - uncredited) 1943 Thank Your Lucky Stars (performer: "Ice Cold Katy" (1943) - uncredited) 1941 The Great Lie (performer: "Slumber My Darling" (1862) - uncredited) 1937 Saratoga (performer: "The Horse with the Dreamy Eyes" (1937) - uncredited) 1936 Show Boat (performer: "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" (1927), "Ah Still Suits Me" (1936) - uncredited) 1935 The Little Colonel (performer: "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" - uncredited) 1934 Babbitt (performer: "Blues Ain't Nothing but a Good Man Feeling Bad" - uncredited) 1934 Judge Priest (performer: "My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night" (1853), "

Aunt Dilsey's Improvisation" (1934), "Massa Jesus Wrote Me a Note" (1934), "The Little Brown Jug" (1869), "Aunt Dilsey's Song" (1934) - uncredited) / (writer: "Aunt Dilsey's Improvisation" (1934) - uncredited) Hide Jim Crow Museum: The Mammy Caricature The Mammy Caricature WATCH MAMMY CARICATURES IN MOVIES Mammy is the most well known and enduring racial caricature of African American women.

The Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University has more than 100 items with the mammy image, including ashtrays, souvenirs, postcards, fishing lures, detergent, artistic prints, toys, candles, and kitchenware. This article examines real mammies, fictional mammies, and commercial mammies. Real Mammies From slavery through the Jim Crow era, the mammy image served the political, social, and economic interests of mainstream white America. During slavery, the mammy caricature was posited as proof that blacks -- in this case, black women -- were contented, even happy, as slaves. Her wide grin, hearty laugher, and loyal servitude were offered as evidence of the supposed humanity of the institution of slavery. This was the mammy caricature, and, like all caricatures, it contained a little truth surrounded by a larger lie. The caricature portrayed an obese, coarse, maternal figure. She had great love for her white "family," but often treated her own family with disdain. Although she had children, sometimes many, she was completely desexualized. She "belonged" to the white family, though it was rarely stated.

Unlike Sambo, she was a faithful worker. She had no black friends; the white family was her entire world. Obviously, the mammy caricature was more myth than accurate portrayal. Catherine Clinton (1982), a historian, claimed that real antebellum mammies were rare: Records do acknowledge the presence of female slaves who served as the "right hand" of plantation mistresses. Yet documents from the planter class during the first fifty years following the American Revolution reveal only a handful of such examples. Not until after Emancipation did black women run white households or occupy in any significant number the special positions ascribed to them in folklore and fiction. The Mammy was created by white Southerners to redeem the relationship between black women and white men within slave society in response to the antislavery attack from the North during the ante-bellum period. In the primary records from before the Civil War, hard evidence for its existence simply does not appear.(pp.

201-202) According to Patricia Turner (1994), Professor of African American and African Studies, before the Civil War only very wealthy whites could afford the luxury of "utilizing the (black) women as house servants rather than as field hands" (p. 44). Moreover, Turner claims that house servants were usually mixed raced, skinny (blacks were not given much food), and young (fewer than 10 percent of black women lived beyond fifty years). Why were the fictional mammies so different from their real-life counterparts? The answer lies squarely within the complex sexual relations between blacks and whites. Abolitionists claimed that one of the many brutal aspects of slavery was that slave owners sexually exploited their female slaves, especially light-skinned ones who approximated the mainstream definition of female sexual attractiveness. The mammy caricature was deliberately constructed to suggest ugliness. Mammy was portrayed as dark-skinned, often pitch black, in a society that regarded black skin as ugly, tainted. She was obese, sometimes morbidly overweight. Moreover, she was often portrayed as old, or at least middle-aged. The attempt was to desexualize mammy.

The implicit assumption was this: No reasonable white man would choose a fat, elderly black woman instead of the idealized white woman. The black mammy was portrayed as lacking all sexual and sensual qualities. The de-eroticism of mammy meant that the white wife -- and by extension, the white family, was safe. The sexual exploitation of black women by white men was unfortunately common during the antebellum period, and this was true irrespective of the economic relationship involved; in other words, black women were sexually exploited by rich whites, middle class whites, and poor whites. Sexual relations between blacks and whites -- whether consensual or rapes -- were taboo; yet they occurred often. All black women and girls, regardless of their physical appearances, were vulnerable to being sexually assaulted by white men. The mammy caricature tells many lies; in this case, the lie is that white men did not find black women sexually desirable. The mammy caricature implied that black women were only fit to be domestic workers; thus, the stereotype became a rationalization for economic discrimination.

During the Jim Crow period, approximately 1877 to 1966, America's race-based, race-segregated job economy limited most blacks to menial, low paying, low status jobs. Black women found themselves forced into one job category, house servant. Jo Ann Gibson Robinson (1987), a biographer of the Civil Rights Movement, described the limited opportunities for black women in the 1950s: Jobs for clerks in dimestores, cashiers in markets, and telephone operators were numerous, but were not open to black women. A fifty-dollar-a-week worker could employ a black domestic to clean her home, cook the food, wash and iron clothes, and nurse the baby for as little as twenty dollars per week. (p. 107) During slavery only the very wealthy could afford to "purchase" black women and use them as "house servants," but during Jim Crow even middle class white women could hire black domestic workers. These black women were not mammies.

Mammy was "black, fat with huge breasts, and head covered with a kerchief to hide her nappy hair, strong, kind, loyal, sexless, religious and superstitious" (Christian, 1980, pp. 11-12). She spoke bastardized English; she did not care about her appearance. She was politically safe. She was culturally safe. She was, of course, a figment of the white imagination, a nostalgic yearning for a reality that never had been. The real-life black domestics of the Jim Crow era were poor women denied other opportunities. They performed many of the duties of the fictional mammies, but, unlike the caricature, they were dedicated to their own families, and often resentful of their lowly societal status. Fictional Mammies The slavery-era mammy did not want to be free. She was too busy serving as surrogate mother/grandmother to white families. Mammy was so loyal to her white family that she was often willing to risk her life to defend them. In D. W.

Griffith's movie The Birth of a Nation (1915) -- based on Thomas Dixon's racist novel The Clansman (1905) -- the mammy defends her white master's home against black and white Union soldiers. The message was clear: Mammy would rather fight than be free. In the famous movie Gone With The Wind (Selznick & Fleming, 1939), the black mammy also fights black soldiers whom she believes to be a threat to the white mistress of the house. Mammy found life on vaudeville stages, in novels, in plays, and finally, in films and on television. White men, wearing black face makeup, did vaudeville skits as Sambos, Mammies, and other anti-black stereotypes. The standard for mammy depictions was offered by Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 book, Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book's mammy, Aunt Chloe, is described in this way: A round, black, shiny face is hers, so glossy as to suggest the idea that she might have been washed over with the whites of eggs, like one of her own tea rusks.

Her whole plump countenance beams with satisfaction and contentment from under a well-starched checkered turban, bearing on it; however, if we must confess it, a little of that tinge of self-consciousness which becomes the first cook of the neighborhood, as Aunt Chloe was universally held and acknowledged to be.(Stowe, 1966, p. 31) Aunt Chloe was nurturing and protective of "her" white family, but less caring toward her own children. She is the prototypical fictional mammy: self-sacrificing, white-identified, fat, asexual, good-humored, a loyal cook, housekeeper and quasi-family member. During the first half of the 1900s, while black Americans were demanding political, social, and economic advancement, Mammy was increasingly popular in the field of entertainment.

The first talking movie was 1927's The Jazz Singer (Crosland) with Al Jolson in blackface singing "Mammy." In 1934 the movie Imitation of Life (Laemmle & Stahl) told the story of a black maid, Aunt Delilah (played by Louise Beavers) who inherited a pancake recipe. This movie mammy gave the valuable recipe to Miss Bea, her boss. Miss Bea successfully marketed the recipe. She offered Aunt Delilah a twenty percent interest in the pancake company. "You'll have your own car. Your own house," Miss Bea tells Aunt Delilah. Mammy is frightened. "My own house? You gonna send me away, Miss Bea? I can't live with you? Oh, Honey Chile, please don't send me away." Aunt Delilah, though she had lived her entire life in poverty, does not want her own house. "How I gonna take care of you and Miss Jessie (Miss Bea's daughter) if I ain't here... I'se your cook. And I want to stay your cook." Regarding the pancake recipe, Aunt Delilah said, "I gives it to you, Honey.

I makes you a present of it" (Bogle, 1994, p. 57). Aunt Delilah worked to keep the white family stable, but her own family disintegrated -- her self-hating daughter rejected her, then ran away from home to "pass for white." Near the movie's conclusion, Aunt Delilah dies "of a broken heart." Imitation of Life was probably the highlight of Louise Beavers' acting career. Almost all of her characters, before and after the Aunt Delilah role, were mammy or mammy-like. She played hopelessly naive maids in Mae West's She Done Him Wrong (Sherman, 1933), and Jean Harlow's Bombshell (Stromberg & Fleming, 1933). She played loyal servants in Made for Each Other (Selznick & Cromwell, 1939), and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (Frank, Panama & Potter, 1948), and several other movies. Beavers had a weight problem: it was a constant battle for her to stay overweight. She often wore padding to give her the appearance of a mammy.

Also, she had been reared in California, and she had to fabricate a southern accent. Moreover, she detested cooking. She was truly a fictional mammy. Imitation of Life was remade (without the pancake recipe storyline) in 1959 (Hunter & Sirk). It starred Lana Turner as the white mistress, and Juanita Moore (in an Oscar-nominated Best Supporting Actress performance) as the mammy. It was also a tear-jerker. Hattie McDaniel was another well known mammy portrayer. In her early films, for example The Golden West (Grainger & Howard, 1932), and The Story of Temple Drake (Glazer & Roberts, 1933), she played unobtrusive, weak mammies. However, her role in Judge Priest (Wurtzel & Ford, 1934) signaled the beginning of the sassy, quick-tempered mammies that she popularized.

She played the saucy mammy in many movies, including, Music is Magic (Stone & Marshall, 1935), The Little Colonel (DeSylva & Butler, 1935), Alice Adams (Berman & Stevens, 1935), Saratoga (Hyman & Conway, 1937), and The Mad Miss Manton (Wolfson & Jason, 1938). In 1939, she played Scarlett O'Hara's sassy but loyal servant in Gone With the Wind. McDaniel won an Oscar for best supporting actress, the first black to win an Academy Award. Hattie McDaniel was a gifted actress who added depth to the character of mammy; unfortunately, she, like almost all blacks from the 1920s through 1950s, was typecast as a servant. She was often criticized by blacks for perpetuating the mammy caricature. She responded this way: "Why should I complain about making seven thousand dollars a week playing a maid? If I didn't, I'd be making seven dollars a week actually being one" (Bogle, 1994, p. 82).

Beulah was a television show, popular from 1950 to 1953, in which a mammy nurtures a white suburban family. Hattie McDaniel originated the role for radio; Louise Beavers performed the role on television. The Beulah image resurfaced in the 1980s when Nell Carter, a talented black singer, played a mammy-like role on the situation comedy Gimme a Break. She was dark-skinned, overweight, sassy, white-identified, and like Aunt Delilah in Imitation of Life, content to live in her white employer's home and nurture the white family. Commercial Mammies Mammy was born on the plantation in the imagination of slavery defenders, but she grew in popularity during the period of Jim Crow. The mainstreaming of Mammy was primarily, but not exclusively, the result of the fledging advertising industry. The mammy image was used to sell almost any household item, especially breakfast foods, detergents, planters, ashtrays, sewing accessories, and beverages. As early as 1875, Aunt Sally, a Mammy image, appeared on cans of baking powder.

Later, different Mammy images appeared on Luzianne coffee and cleaners, Fun to Wash detergent, Aunt Dinah molasses, and other products. Mammy represented wholesomeness. You can trust the mammy pitchwoman. Mammy's most successful commercial expression was (and is) Aunt Jemima. In 1889, Charles Rutt, a Missouri newspaper editor, and Charles G. Underwood, a mill owner, developed the idea of a self-rising flour that only needed water. He called it Aunt Jemima's recipe. Rutt borrowed the Aunt Jemima name from a popular vaudeville song that he had heard performed by a team of minstrel performers. The minstrels included a skit with a southern mammy. Rutt decided to use the name and the image of the mammy-like Aunt Jemima to promote his new pancake mix. Unfortunately for him, he and his partner lacked the necessary capital to effectively promote and market the product. They sold the pancake recipe and the accompanying Aunt Jemima marketing idea to the R.T. Davis Mill Company. The R.T.

Davis Company improved the pancake formula, and, more importantly, they developed an advertising plan to use a real person to portray Aunt Jemima. The woman they found to serve as the live model was Nancy Green, who was born a slave in Kentucky in 1834. She impersonated Aunt Jemima until her death in 1923. Struggling with profits, R.T. Davis Company made the bold decision to risk their entire fortune and future on a promotional exhibition at the 1893 World's Exposition in Chicago. The Company constructed the world's largest flour barrel, 24 feet high and 12 feet across. Standing near the basket, Nancy Green, dressed as Aunt Jemima, sang songs, cooked pancakes, and told stories about the Old South -- stories which presented the South as a happy place for blacks and whites alike. She was a huge success. She had served tens of thousands of pancakes by the time the fair ended. Her success established her as a national celebrity.

Her image was plastered on billboards nationwide, with the caption, "I'se in town, honey." Green, in her role as Aunt Jemima, made appearances at countless country fairs, flea markets, food shows, and local grocery stores. By the turn of the century, Aunt Jemima, along with the Armour meat chef, were the two commercial symbols most trusted by American housewives (Sacharow, 1982, p. 82). By 1910 more than 120 million Aunt Jemima breakfasts were being served annually. The popularity of Aunt Jemima inspired many giveaway and mail-in premiums, including, dolls, breakfast club pins, dishware, and recipe booklets. The R.T. Davis Mill Company was renamed the Aunt Jemima Mills Company in 1914, and eventually sold to the Quaker Oats Company in 1926. In 1933 Anna Robinson, who weighed 350 pounds, became the second Aunt Jemima. She was much heavier and darker in complexion than was Nancy Green.

The third Aunt Jemima was Edith Wilson, who is known primarily for playing the role of Aunt Jemima on radio and television shows between 1948 and 1966. By the 1960s the Quaker Oats Company was the market leader in the frozen food business, and Aunt Jemima was an American icon. In recent years, Aunt Jemima has been given a makeover: her skin is lighter and the handkerchief has been removed from her head. She now has the appearance of an attractive maid -- not a Jim Crow era mammy. © Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Sociology Ferris State University Will Oscar Boost Octavia Spencer's Career? - ABC News ABC News Feb. 28, 2012 ABCNEWS.com After Octavia Spencer won the Academy Award for best supporting actress, Jennifer Hudson , who won the same award in 2006, was first to welcome her into the very exclusive club of black women Oscar winners. "Yes!!!! Welcome to the family Octavia!! Congrats!!! Amazing!!" she tweeted Sunday night. Like all families, this one comes with baggage.

For most Oscar winners, an Academy Award is a boon to their careers, both in terms of roles and earning power. For black women, the road after Oscar seems to be less certain. "The reality is there aren't enough good roles for black women, let alone plus sized ones," Village Voice columnist Michael Musto told ABCNews.com. Just look at Mo'Nique , who won the same award in 2010 for "Precious." She only recently signed onto her next feature after her BET talk show was cancelled. Then, there's her co-star Gabourey Sidibe , who was nominated for a best actress Oscar. After a couple of small film roles, Sidibe is now a regular on the Showtime series "The Big C" with Laura Linney. Spencer, who became only the sixth black woman to win an Oscar, has more acting chops than both and should fare better. "Octavia has already shown her range in both drama and wacky comedy, so she should do fine in a variety of character parts that show off her talent. In addition to films, there's also TV (which Octavia's already done and can shine in again)," Musto said.

"She got mad talent, not only on the screen, big and small, but her interpersonal skills and circle of friends are very strong," Yahoo! Movies contributing editor Thelma Adams told ABCNews.com. "She is such a human magnet for positivity that things are going to coalesce for her." Adams could see Spencer starring in her own TV series, doing a Tyler Perry film, getting a meaty role in a mainstream movie as well as playing "a lot of best friends." The leap to leading lady won't be easy, however. "It's not just a black woman issue," Adams said. "It's a woman who wants to play a leading role issue. Look at Melissa Leo. She is still looking for that breakout starring role. The only way to change that is for women to produce, write and direct more films with women. The success of "Bridesmaids" is a sign that it is changing." Perhaps that's why Spencer and her "Help" co-star Viola Davis, who lost the best actress award to Meryl Streep , have expressed their desire to begin producing. "I don't have one role that I want to play," Spencer told reporters backstage after her win. "I guess you know what, I want to be a producer.

I want to be an activist. I want to be proactive in bringing about work for men, women, boys, girls, everybody who is good at what they do and deserve a shot at it. So I think my role, I want to have a presence both behind the scenes and in front of the camera. So I can't say on one particular thing, so I'll just name them all. I'll be the jack of all trades and hopefully decent at one of them." "If I am not the instrument of change, I can meander through this business and be the black woman who always has two or three scenes but with fabulous actors around me," Davis told the Los Angeles Times earlier this month. "And hopefully things will keep improving for black women in show biz," Musto said. "Lord knows, Minny is a long way forward from Mammy in Gone With The Wind!" Click through to see how Hattie McDaniel of "Gone with the Wind" and the other black women Oscar winners have fared.

John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images Hattie McDaniel Hattie McDaniel made history as the first black woman to win an Oscar for playing Mammy in "Gone With the Wind." But she would spend the rest of her career essentially reprising her role as a maid before landing the lead role in the ABC comedy series "Beulah." Still, she would be criticized by members of the black community for perpetuating stereotypes. In the end, McDaniel died alone and in debt at age 57, leaving her Oscar to Howard University. Years later, Mo'Nique paid tribute to McDaniel in her acceptance speech. Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images Whoopi Goldberg As a comedic actress, Whoopi Goldberg appears to have fared better than most of the other black women Oscar winners. Besides winning an Oscar for her 1991 role in "Ghost," she's won an Emmy, Grammy and Tony awards. Even so, in 2007, Goldberg announced she was retiring from acting because she was no longer receiving scripts. But her role as a co-host on "The View" has earned her new fans.

Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMagic/Getty Images Halle Berry These days, Halle Berry is generating more headlines for her personal life than her acting. Since becoming the first black actress to win an Oscar for the 2001 film "Monster's Ball," Berry has played Catwoman, a Bond girl and an X-Men. Her most critically acclaimed role since her Oscar win was playing a woman with multiple personalities in 2010's " Frankie and Alice ." But the film had only limited release and gained little traction during awards season.

Charley Gallay/Getty Images Jennifer Hudson After becoming the youngest black actor to ever win an Oscar, Jennifer Hudson took supporting roles "Sex and the City" and "The Secret Life of Bees." But she turned down the lead role in "Precious." After putting on the pounds for "Dreamgirls," Hudson said in her book, "I Got This: How I Changed My Ways and Lost What Weighed Me Down," that she was committed to getting fit and "wanted try a role that had nothing whatsoever to do with my weight." Hudson finally made the leap to leading lady in the 2011 biopic "Winnie" about Winnie Mandela, but the movie, which has been plagued with problems, has yet to find a U.S. distributor. Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage/Getty Images Mo'Nique After winning the best supporting actress Oscar in 2010 for her role as an abusive mother in "Precious," Mo'Nique told reporters backstage she didn't expect the award to change her life. "You know, this role was so not about my acting career. This role has shaped my life and allowed me not to judge and to love unconditionally.

If that goes into my career, great, but if it doesn't and I'm just the dynamic person that I strive to be every day, then I've won, baby!" she said. In a way, the Oscar hasn't changed her life. The comedian focused her energy on hosting BET's "The Mo'Nique Show," only to see it cancelled the following year. She recently signed on to her first feature -- two years after winning the Oscar. She's slated to play one of five strangers whose lives are changed during a long layover at Chicago's O'Hare Airport in "Bumped." McDaniel wins Oscar - Feb 29, 1940 - HISTORY.com McDaniel wins Oscar Publisher A+E Networks On February 29, 1940, Gone with the Wind is honored with eight Oscars by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. An epic Southern romance set during the hard times of the Civil War, the movie swept the prestigious Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, Film Editing, and Actress categories. However, the most momentous award that night undoubtedly went to Hattie McDaniel for her portrayal of “Mammy,” a housemaid and former slave.

McDaniel, who won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award, was the first African American actress or actor ever to be honored with an Oscar. Born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1895, McDaniel demonstrated her talents as a singer and actress while growing up in Denver, Colorado. She left school while a teenager to become a performer in several traveling minstrel groups and in 1924 became one of the first African American women to sing on U.S. radio. With the onset of the Great Depression, she was forced to take work as a ladies’ washroom attendant in a Milwaukee club. The club, which hired only white performers, eventually made an exception and let her sing, and she performed there for a year before setting her sights on Hollywood. In Los Angeles, she won a small role on a local radio show called The Optimistic Do-Nuts and before long had become the program’s main attraction. In 1932, she made her film debut as a Southern house servant in The Golden West.

In American movies at the time, African American actors and actresses were generally limited to house servant roles, and McDaniel apparently embraced this stereotype, playing the role of maid or cook in nearly 40 films in the 1930s. Responding to criticism by groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) that she was perpetuating stereotypes, McDaniel responded that she would rather play a maid on the screen than be one in real life. Furthermore, she often subverted the stereotype by turning her maids into sassy, independent-minded characters who sometimes made white audiences shift uncomfortably in their seats. Her most famous role was as Mammy in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind. Directed by Victor Fleming and based on the best-selling Margaret Mitchell novel of the same name, the movie remains the highest-grossing movie of all time when inflation is taken into account. Although she was honored with an Oscar, liberal African Americans sharply criticized McDaniel for accepting a role in which her character, a former slave, spoke nostalgically about the Old South.

McDaniel’s film career declined in the late 1940s, and in 1947 she returned to radio as the star of the nationally broadcast The Beulah Show. In the program, she again portrayed an effervescent Southern maid but in a markedly un-stereotypical manner that won praise from the NAACP. In 1951, while filming the first episodes of a television version of the popular show, she had a heart attack. She recovered to do a few more radio programs but in 1952 died of breast cancer at the age of 57. More on This Topic Hattie McDaniel winning Best Supporting Actress - YouTube Hattie McDaniel winning Best Supporting Actress Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.

Uploaded on Sep 27, 2011 Fay Bainter presenting Hattie McDaniel with the Oscar® for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in "Gone With The Wind" at the 12th Academy Awards® in 1940. Category

Question: Who won an Oscar for her role as 'Mammy' in 'Gone With The Wind'?
Answer: Hattie McDaniel